08 January 2007

Exclusive Hands On Review Of Nokia's
Open C Winning Application, MobiTubia

This will be just a very brief review of the MobiTubia application developed by my good friend Sittiphol Phanvilai of Bangkog, Thailand. I first met Sittiphol at the nokia world 2007 event held in amsterdam last year, where he was awarded 1st prize for this great application from the nokia open C challenge. , receiving a cash prize of $10,000. Sittiphol ported 25,000 lines of code to the Open C environment to make the application compatible with the Symbian s60 3rd Edition Operating System.

Im sure you are all well aware of this application, and what it does, but here is a brief explaination for those who dont know.

MobiTubia is a Flash Lite video (.flv) player and a YouTube portal application with real-time decoding for the S60 platform, MobiTubia enables mobile users to access flv clips using several different methods. Additionally, the application allows users to browse and search for specific content on YouTube.

Sittiphol really is a great guy, and also an extemly talented developer, he is currently a graduate student in the Master of Engineering program in Computers at Chulalongkorn University. I was so impressed from this application after seeing it in action on the big screen (video below) at nokia world, i just had to learn more about it from Sittiphol.

I also kept in contact with Sittiphol after the nokia world event via email, and he very kindly sent me a special version of MobiTubia as a xmas gift. Needless to say i was very happy, and probally the best present i had recieved this year lol.

I installed it onto a nokia n82 (which i am currently trialing) immidiatly, and was just amazed at how fast this application is, the UI is just great, and the only such UI ive seen in other application, is the nokia ROM application Video Center, it has the very same nice spinning carousel User Interface, only it is much nicer. Better background, full screen and great effects as you browse through the various different options and YouTube videos which it offers.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

Upon open the application you come to the splash screen, then you come to the great carousel User Interface with all the different icons, each for a different task. This part of the application we can go straight into the YouTube portal from clicking the YouTube icon, or from here you are also able to Open Clip URL which will decode and stream any clip from the internet with .flv format, not just YouTube clip, but from any URL, and Sittiphol has even made the typing URL adress as simple as possible, by having the http://www./.flv already typed out for you.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

The next icon "Saved Clips" will give you access to any saved .flv clips you have stored on your device's memory card, and you can also save a clip from YouTube and then access them here later offline. Stored in E:\Videos\MobiTubia\ In this directory, you can upload all your fav .flv video's from your PC, and play them using the MobiTubia. It is also a great offline .flv video player, as well as a great online streaming player. The YouTube clips you save are stored in E:\Videos\MobiTubia\YT\ which are named after the YouTube ID, also this same directory is used to store the small .jpg thumbnail files. The next icons on this carousel you come to, are the "About" and "Exit" icons, about is like any other application, gives information about the application, and develper contact details.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

Now onto the YouTube Portal of this application, it is just great. As you can see from screenshot's above, upon clicking the YouTube icon in the first carousel, brings you to the several different options in which you can view your desired YouTube clips. The first one is the "Recently Featured" icon which is also the first one your presented with on the carousel. This takes information live from the YouTube website, and displays the first 25 YouTube video clips that are Recently Featured, exactly the same clips that would be shown in this category as if you are on the YouTube website, and MobiTubia presents them to you with small thumbnail icon's with there clips name below and above the thumbnail, which you then simply click a clip of your choice to start streaming the clip live the screen of your symbian phone to watch it. Again, great zoom effects are used to bring up the video to full screen for viewing.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

My favourite is the Clip Search, this is really good. Anything you type in the Clip Search, will bring you the exact same clips which would be brought to your PC web browser if enter the same search keyword. MobiTubia brings the first 25 results using the keyword you enter, and displays them in the thumbnail's view. Also pressing left soft key brings you to a menu from where you can make a new search, or reload the current searched keyword, MobiTubia also remembers your last searched keyword.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

There is also the "Popular Clips" icon selection, which when selected, bings up a selection window, offering you to view clips most popular of the day, week, month or all of them. And again it will show you the first 25 results, and by pressing the left soft key, brings you another menu, in which your able to goto next page, 4 pages in total, with 100 video clips show between all 4 pages.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

The last 2 icons on the carousel are the "View by YouTube ID" and the "Open Web Clip". I have not actually looked into the Open Web Clip or asked Sittiphol exactly what this feature does, but the View By YouTube ID does exactly as it says it does, it views any YouTube video clip by its ID. The ID can be found in the adress bar of the browser, it is the 11 digit number at the end of the URL in YouTube, it look something like this U8hNz3W63Ec and have something like watch?v= before the ID.

Click To Enlarge, Or Right Click Save Target As

MobiTubia is still in early development stage, and Sittiphol has some really great new features planed for it before release to public, but even this early beta version, i am still very impressed. There are still some very minor bugs need to be fixed, and will be fixed before final release. There is no date for release, as expected from any graduate studant, Sittiphol is extremly busy with his course work from Chulalongkorn University, and this he must think of before anything else. He works on MobiTubia development all in what little spare time he has, so we just need to be patient for the release for this application, but let me tell you something right now.. its going to be well worth the wait

Diagram Of MobiTubia Video Playback Screen

Overall, it is all i expected it to be, and more. A truely amazing YouTube portal application, and offline .flv video player. Great User Interface, really nice icons and looks, fast, very simple to use, amazing fuctionality and great features.. And Sittiphol has more great features he will impliment into MobiTubia, i will keep you updated on this application, it is definetly one to keep your eye on.

Last but not least, here is a short video (what you didnt think i would make a review without some kind of hands on video footage? did you?) so here it is, a short brief video showing some of the great features of MobiTubia YouTube web portal and offline flv video player application, developed by my good friend Sittiphol Phanvilai. Enjoy it.

Hope you enjoyed the review as much i did making, it is a real pleasure playing with this application, and i cant wait to see what Sittiphol adds to it next

Here is Sittiphol's official MobiTubia website, and blog.